My wife and I stole an hour at the Phillips Collection in Washington the other
night. It was a visit of a perfect length. After 45 minutes, to get my marginal
minute, the art has to be really good. Art is like guitar practice. One long
session does nothing. A half hour regularly is what's called for.
Had I been at the museum on vacation-- where I felt compelled to spend two hours, I probably would not have stopped to only seriously consider a few pieces. I would have rushed to see everything and in doing so would have seen nothing at all.
In this appetizer-sized visit I finally got Rothko.
There's a delightful little room of four of his works. It's almost like a
chapel (Yes, there's one in Houston).
It's delicately lit and when we went in, it was empty. The room can't fit more
than eight. Two should be the limit.
I can't explain why this time was different but the color choices
and the weight he gave to each seemed absolutely perfect.
They were both gorgeous in their own way. I know little
about art, and I'm almost certainly going to get this wrong but the Paris street seemed
younger to me: it was a hard, cold image of city life. The light was perfectly
captured and the scene was one of activity--not heroic or special activity
(which can, in its own way be heroic, of course).
The second one, "The Open Window" was relaxed, colorful, at ease. It felt
older. Perhaps it's as simple as interior v. exterior. The Paris street is all about exterior. Though
the window shows an inviting world outside, it's an inward-feeling scene.
"The important thing is to remember what most impressed you
and to put it on canvas as fast as possible. Then, using only one color as a
basis, you structure the entire painting around it. Color represents a logic
that is just as unrelenting as the logic of form. One must never let go before
having managed to set down one's first impressions." Pierre Bonnard, 1937
Leave a comment